I want the cash, the jewelry, and the licensing fees or I'll blow your brains out.

We're back to charting Horwitz Publications' unlicensed usage of celebrity images for its paperback covers. We've already talked about Joan Collins, Senta Berger, Elke Sommer, Lili St. Cyr, and others. This time the company borrows Belgian actress Dominique Wilms. The image chosen was originally used as a promo photo and the basis of the promo poster for her 1953 film debut La môme vert de gris, aka Poison Ivy. We're convinced now that Horwitz, which was based in Australia, did this because copyright agreements were lax or nonexistent regarding image licensing across international borders. And even if some rules were on the books, it's very possible Wilms and her management never saw the above cover, and if they did decided it wasn't worth a legal fight. The Horwitz guys were sneaky bastards. But as we've asked before, why bother? Wilms was so obscure at this point that Horwitz gained nothing from using her face. Don't get us wrong—she has a great face. But Horwitz could have simply used local models and produced identical results. That's the part we'll never get. But we've queried an expert about stolen paperback imagery and we'll share his answer soon.

I know I'm an unorthodox teacher, officer. But if she thinks this is tough how is she ever gonna handle a left turn in traffic?

Today we have another issue of our favorite men's magazine Adam, this time from July 1971. Inside there's the usual fiction, true adventure, and cheesecake, including British model Susan Shaw. But this issue is also a little different—it dips into celebrity waters with a write-up on Aly Khan, the Muslim prince whose romantic hook-ups included Gene Tierney, Bettina Graziani, and Rita Hayworth, who he married in 1949. The cover illustration is paired with the short story "Blonde for Bait," by Dick Love. Yeah. Dick Love. This makes the 56th issue of Adam we've uploaded to our website. Enjoy Dick and more in thirty-two scans below, and see all the other issues just by clicking the keywords at bottom.

You two stop fighting or I won't let either of you rub sunscreen on my back.

We got lazy about scanning again, but today we're back to Australia's Adam magazine with an issue published this month in 1970. The cover illustrates Mark Bannerman's sea adventure “Day of the Knife,” in which a habitual troublemaker is released from an island prison by a connected police official on the condition that he recover a cache of Spanish gold. The gold happens to be aboard a ship that sank a hundred years ago in shark infested waters. This isn't actually the major problem. The more serious issue is that he strikes up an affair with the wife of the rich man sponsoring the expedition, and quickly learns the wife wants her husband dead. Since they'll be at sea together, what better time to do it than during the diving operation? But when he eventually feeds the husband to hungry sharks the femme fatale reverses course, accuses him of murdering her husband out of jealousy, and gets him tossed back in jail. It's only when he's sentenced to death at his trial that he realizes it isn't just the wife who set him up, but the police official too—the pair had been lovers all along. It's pretty straightforward stuff as adventure fiction goes, and not well written, but enjoyable just the same. Other tales in the magazine are better. We have dozens of issues of Adam in the website, so if you want to see more from this publication just click the keywords at bottom.

Some promo posters work exactly as intended. We saw this one for Cult of the Cobra and immediately dropped everything to find the film. We knew it was going to be a cheesy b-movie because we'd never heard of it before, and perhaps having low expectations is the key to enjoying it. In the story six American G.I.s in (presumably) India decide to alleviate their boredom by attending a local cobra cult's ritual. When they disrupt the ceremony in spectacularly boneheaded fashion the high priest curses the group. They pay no attention to this at all.

They return to the U.S. not knowing they've been tracked there, but when they start dropping dead they think, “Hey, didn't that high priest dude curse us?” Yes, he did. In fact, he specifically said the cobra goddess would kill them one by one. Missy Misdemeanor Eliot once memorably rapped in her hit song “Slide,” Behind every curtain there's a snake bitch lurkin', and that neatly encapsulates the problem for the surviving G.I.s—they realize they're in trouble but have no idea who their nemesis could be.

But we viewers don't have to guess. Their homicidal stalker is Faith Domergue, raven haired veteran of many beloved sci-fi and horror films, including This Island Earth and The Atomic Man. She also starred in the occasional decent drama such as Vendetta and Where Danger Lives. She's an unusual looking woman but here her sloe-eyed beauty really works. You can almost believe she'll turn into a snake at any moment. Check her out:

Definite snakelike qualities, right?

Cult of the Cobra is a bad but fun Universal International cheapie, what we like to call a popcorn muncher, a time killer you can enjoy and forget immediately thereafter. Its main attractions are Domergue as the snake woman, the luscious Kathleen Hughes as the hero's love interest, and some amusing cobra-vision sequences. And that amazing promo poster. We also have the alternate U.S. promo and Australian promo below. Cult of the Cobra slithered into cinemas for the first time today in 1955.

We've been trying to score a copy of Man's Epic for quite a while, and today, finally, we received this great Australian men's magazine via the international mails. We were so excited we immediately scanned a bunch of pages and have nothing more to say.

Nearly ten years into this website we've mentioned Chinatown only once—when we wrote a few lines while sharing two Japanese promo posters. The above poster was made for the film's Australian run, which began today in 1975. The film has been discussed everywhere, which means we can't add much, so let's just call it an all-time masterpiece, and one of the most watchable and re-watchable movies ever made, filled with details you notice over time. For example, it didn't strike us until after a few viewings that Jack Nicholson does his own stunt in that culvert scene, the one where the water rushes down the sluiceway and pins him against a chain link fence. You wouldn't see many modern day stars get wet and cold for a moment that lasts five seconds onscreen. We also failed to notice the first few times that the police lieutenant, Escobar, is Mexican-American. It just didn't strike us. But he would have been an extreme rarity in the 1937 L.A. of the film, and the writing and/or casting choice there was certainly deliberate. Other details continue to emerge, and we've seen the movie five or six times.

As far as director Roman Polanski goes, we've talked about him before. But we'll add that art stands on its own, and people stand on their own too. Having created superior art should not absolve someone of crimes; having committed crimes should not serve to denigrate superior art. That's just our opinion. Plus, a director isn't the only one responsible for a film. The hundreds of others involved, including the select group pictured below, and especially the unpictured screenwriter Robert Towne—who is just as responsible for Chinatown as Polanski and won an Oscar for his screenplay—deserve credit. We will always criticize art for being inaccurate when it pretends to be truthful, or for promulgating false or harmful beliefs. Chinatown doesn't do that. Quite the opposite—it offers sharp insights into how and why Los Angeles became what it is. Meanwhile its subplot somewhat foreshadows Polanski's own crime, which makes the film ironic in the extreme. If you haven't seen it you simply must.

Shut up, conscience. We both knew she'd eventually criticize my driving one time too many.

Above, both sides of Australian writer Charlotte Jay's, aka Geraldine Halls' The Fugitive Eye, for Avon Books, 1953, about a witness to murder who loses his eyesight in an accident and finds himself pursued by bad guys. The rear cover, with its multi-angle text, is almost as interesting as the front, but the art is uncredited. If you're wondering where the dead woman's other foot is, someone found it over here.

Above, five covers from the Australian paperback series Kane, by C.J. McKenzie for Webster Publications. All of the covers feature photo-illustrations of actual celebs, but the only one we recognize is Bettie Page, panel three. The main character in these books is columnist Martin Kane, who always seems to get tangled up in murder. C.J. McKenzie had been an editor at Horwitz Publications and wrote some novels as Carter Brown while series author Alan Yates was busy elsewhere during the late 1950s. He wrote Kane afterward, in 1958 and 1959.

We have another issue of Adam magazine today, just because we love it so much and have dozens we haven't shared yet. Inside this one, which appeared this month in 1973, is an interesting article about the practice of scalping. Writer Paul Brock notes that English puritans scalped foes in Europe and brought the idea to North America. He says enraged Native Americans promptly retaliated by doing the same. He doesn't get this quite right, though. Scalping is not something that can be said to have been invented by anyone, because evidence of the practice goes back millennia in various parts of the world. But European colonists industrialized and monetized scalping in North America, incentivizing the mass murder of Native Americans by offering bounties, including on children. And of course, as often happens with atrocities, propagandists vilified the other side for doing it. Even during colonial times Indians were labeled as vicious savages who scalped whites, and to this day most people still don't realize that it was whites who expanded and normalized the practice. So there's a little holiday cheer for you. Elsewhere in the issue you get the usual assortment of fiction, glamour photography, and cartoons. Including today's upload we have fifty four—yes 54—issues of Adam in our website. Why? Because we think it's the coolest men's adventure magazine ever published.

This issue of Adam magazine hit newsstands this month in 1967, and as always it has vivid cover art by either Phil Belbin or Jack Waugh, in this case illustrating Bill Starr's science fiction story “Almost Human.” Starr's story deals with human-like androids created by the U.S. to win the Cold War. Problem is the Soviets have their own androids. The main character is a U.S. spy trained to infiltrate a Soviet android base, but there he finds that the machines are more human than he thought. These types of android tales were not unique in sci-fi, but still you have give Starr credit for coming up with his take a full year before Phillip K. Dick changed the game with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? You may know that book better as the source material for Blade Runner. Starr is no Phillip K. Dick, but the story is interesting, with sex serving as the key to the question of the androids' potential humanity. Which is more fun than using that Voight-Kampff test Dick dreamed up. We have about thirty scans from Adam below, and many more issues in the website.

The federal penitentiary located on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay closes. The island had been home to a lighthouse, a military fortification, and a military prison over the years. In 1972, it would become a national recreation area open to tourists, and it would receive national landmark designations in 1976 and 1986.

1916—Einstein Publishes General Relativity

German-born theoretical physicist Albert Einstein publishes his general theory of relativity. Among the effects of the theory are phenomena such as the curvature of space-time, the bending of rays of light in gravitational fields, faster than light universe expansion, and the warping of space time around a rotating body.

1931—Nevada Approves Gambling

In the U.S., the state of Nevada passes a resolution allowing for legalized gambling. Unregulated gambling had been commonplace in the early Nevada mining towns, but was outlawed in 1909 as part of a nationwide anti-gaming crusade. The leading proponents of re-legalization expected that gambling would be a short term fix until the state's economic base widened to include less cyclical industries. However, gaming proved over time to be one of the least cyclical industries ever conceived.

1941—Tuskegee Airmen Take Flight

During World War II, the 99th Pursuit Squadron, aka the Tuskegee Airmen, is activated. The group is the first all-black unit of the Army Air Corp, and serves with distinction in Africa, Italy, Germany and other areas. In March 2007 the surviving airmen and the widows of those who had died received Congressional Gold Medals for their service.

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